


Do You Wanna Be My Sidekick

by Tonight_At_Noon



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Original Character(s), and yes this is a weirdly similar yet totally different story compared to my last story, he's an asshole so don't mind him, so let's just enjoy the darcy/bucky goodness shall we?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 04:48:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19077802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tonight_At_Noon/pseuds/Tonight_At_Noon
Summary: Darcy finds Bucky after her boyfriend makes the most outrageous request.





	Do You Wanna Be My Sidekick

**Author's Note:**

> Title and lyrics inside are from "Sidekick" by Walk the Moon.
> 
> Enjoy.

_i often wonder why the things that i want are so hand find_

_but i often fail to see the things i need are right there by my side_

* * *

 

"I'm sorry, what?" 

She stares at him, fist curled around a sharp knife. Letting go of the carrot she had been chopping into tiny pieces, she steps away from the counter--with the knife still snug in her hand--and frowns. Nothing so ridiculous has ever been said to her before. She needs it repeated.

"I'm serious," she says. "Say it again."

He rolls his eyes. He's always rolling his eyes at her. Well, not always. He never used to. But lately, it's become his favourite past time. 7:00 am - wake up. 7:15 am - shower. 7:30 am - eat breakfast. 8:00 am - roll my eyes at my girlfriend. 

She hates it. Despises it. 

Rolling eyes is her thing, the condescending bastard. 

Okay, maybe Jane is right. Maybe it's time to end things with him. She shouldn't be calling her boyfriend a condescending bastard. That is probably a sign things have soured badly.

Looking at him now, in the fluorescent light of his expensive apartment, she sees all the hatred held in his body. It's in his tense shoulders. His twitching eye muscles. His own clenched fists. Carefree Darcy Lewis cannot be with an angry person. Not a real, genuine angry person. That's a recipe for disaster. 

She should have listened to Bucky. 

"You're not allowed to see him anymore," he repeats, clearer and louder and angrier than before.

Darcy knew that was what he had said. Controlling, condescending, angry bastard. 

"Okay," she says slowly, placing the knife on the cutting board to her right. Just in case.

"You'll do it? You'll stop seeing him?" he says with giddy, childish satisfaction. 

"What?" Darcy's frown deepens. "No, no, you didn't let me finish." She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes for a second. "Okay, I hear you, but why the fuck would I do that?" 

His mouth falls open. For the first time in months, he looks gobsmacked. He is the guy who always knows what to say next, but he is also the guy who always gets what he wants. 

His poor brain must be malfunctioning. 

"You don't see it, do you?" he says, and Darcy is instantly taken back to last Christmas under the lamppost outside the post office downtown. It had been cold. Fresh snow covered the streets. The night was silent except for him. 'You don't see it, do you?' he had said. Bucky. He had said the same thing. And when she'd asked him to explain what he meant, he just smiled and took her arm and walked her home. "He's in love with you, Darcy. I'm not gonna stick around and watch you hang out with a guy who's in love with you. You're my girlfriend. Mine." 

He's in love with you.

He's.

In.

Love.

With.

You.

Love.

With.

You.

 _Love_.

"No, he's not," she says when the words finally sink in. They make her feel nauseous. "He's not capable of falling in love." 

He isn't. She's known Bucky Barnes since freshman year of college. Now they're one week from graduating and she's still never seen him last longer than three months with a girl. 

He's a serial heartbreaker, but no-one can ever break his heart.

God, it sounds like she's describing some crappy YA male lead. 

"You're blind, then, Darcy. Just, promise you'll stop talking to him."

Now it's her turn to roll her eyes, and it feels so good to do it. "Or what?"

"Or what?" There's that lost look again. So unused to a challenge. 

"Yeah." She shrugs. "Or what? What'll happen if I refuse to obey you?"

He thinks for a moment before his dark eyes light up. "I'll break up with you."

"You'll break up with me if I don't stop talking to Bucky?" 

"Yes," he says smugly. Like he's the hunter who's just mortally wounded the prized lioness. 

Darcy doesn't say anything. Turning on her heels, she goes towards the front door of the apartment and grabs her keys and wallet. 

This is right. It's good. 

It's long overdue.

"Where are you going? Are you going to tell him you can't hang out with him?"

"Oh, no," she says, her hand wrapped around the door handle. She pretends for a moment that it is his throat, and she squeezes. "I mean, I am going to see him, but it's to tell him that I've just broken up with the biggest asshole on campus." She swings the door wide. "Have a nice life, motherfucker. Cook your own damn dinner."

She doesn't turn to see his face as she exists his penthouse apartment, but she imagines it dons a pure look of defeat.

The lioness has escaped his clutches.

 

**.**

**.**

**.**

 

Her knuckles are sore from all of the knocking. If he isn't home, she's going to find him and then kill him. No. She'll find him and then kiss him. 

Yes. That sounds right. 

That sounds like heaven.

The sound of it rolls over in her belly and warms her cheeks and chest and palms. 

'Why do you still hang out with me?' she had asked that night. 'Don't you realise how boring and uncool I am?'

'You don't see it, do you?'

'See what?' She had been confused, but the intensity in his blue eyes had made it hard to swallow.

He had shaken his head, and when they reached her apartment he had said, 'When you figure it out, and I mean _whenever_ , come and find me.'

 _Well, Bucky_ , she thinks,  _I've figured it out_. _I've come to find you_. _Where the hell are you_?

She bangs on the door again. And again. Her knuckles feel as though they are torn and bleeding.

"Who the fuck's there?" comes a voice on the other side of the door. 

Bucky. Tired, sleepy, unaware that both of their lives are about to unalterably change. 

"It's me," she says breathlessly. 

Silence greets her, and for a second she contemplates giving her name. And for another second she wonders if her ex was horribly wrong and she's just made a huge mistake.

And in the next second, Bucky opens the door and she is rendered thoughtless. 

He's wearing the joke pair of boxer-briefs she got him as a gag gift at Christmas. They have the lamp from _Aladdin_ right across the crotch. 

In retrospect, they were a bit on the nose.

"Darcy, it's almost midnight," he says. "Is everything okay?"

All of the prepared speech she had worked on as she walked here fades instantly from her mind. She stares at his bare chest blankly.

 _Say something_. _Anything_.

"I like your...underwear," she says, mentally slapping herself. 

Bucky raises an eyebrow. "You came here to say that you like my underwear? Is this you checking to see that I actually wear these? Because I do. They're surprisingly comfortable."

She bleats out a laugh. "No, no." _Come on_. _Spit it out_. "I came to say that I just broke up with my boyfriend. Like, literally fifteen minutes ago. Broke up with him then came straight here."

Bucky goes rigid. She swears his muscles actually ripple. Like a tremor of electricity has just gone through him.

It takes a minute for the information to process. "Why did you come here? Why not go to Jane?"

"And run the risk of ruining sex night with Thor?" She laughs again, and it somehow sounds even more insane than the last time. She shakes her head. "No, sorry, I came...I came because...well, because I figured it out."

"You figured it out," he says, feeling out the words.

"Yes, and I'm so sorry it took me so long. It was actually my ex that helped me. He was all like, you can't see Bucky anymore, and I was like, what, no, you can't tell me to do that, why would you tell me to do that, and he was like, because he's in love with you, and I was like, no, and he was like, yeah, and then he said something about, like, how he owned me? It was weird. Anyway, yeah, I got it now. And I think I might love you too. I think I might have always loved you. Sorry, again, for it taking so long." She is panting, breathless, by the end. 

Neither of them say anything for a while. 

The only sound in he empty, dead hallway is Darcy's struggle to regain her composure. 

When the seconds turn to minutes, Darcy, who has always hated quiet, says, "I just didn't think we would work like that."

"Like what?" His voice is soft. It snakes its way into Darcy's mind as if planted there through telepathy.

"Like...like a couple. I was so insecure as a freshman, and I thought you were way out of my league when we met, and it didn't occur to me at all that you were always hanging around me because you maybe liked me as more than a friend," she says, recalling the early stages of their relationship that often consisted of Bucky turning away girls in favour of staying with Darcy in the library. 

"But now?" he says.

Darcy meets his eye. The blue of them is on fire. "I don't think that way anymore."

"Good," Bucky says, coming out of the apartment. He stands so close to Darcy she can feel the heat radiating off of his basically totally naked body. 

She forces herself to keep eye contact. He smiles down at her and cups her face in his warm hands. 

Darcy holds her breath. 

There are no more confessions. No more words at all. Bucky's mouth lands gently, then fiercely, atop Darcy's, and she can't believe it took her this long to understand that this is where she belongs. In Bucky's arms, with his lips coaxing hers open as if she is a box filled with secrets he must know. 

She doesn't run away when he tugs her inside of his apartment. She doesn't run away when his blazing fingers skate the rim of her trousers. When they catch the hem of her t-shirt and tug the fabric up. 

His kisses burn her skin. She is sure she will awake to find scorch marks marring her body. But that is tomorrow's problem. Tonight, there is no problem. 

"Are you sure," he says, his pupils dilated to the size of saucers as her hands pinch the elastic of his boxer briefs.

"I wouldn't be here if I wasn't sure," she says. 

He is about to say something else, something that will elongate this torture, but she shuts him up with a kiss and pulls down. 


End file.
